ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the case for the eight competences that the book is about. In essence, what is needed is schooling that produces people who have the needed skills and dispositions that will allow them to retool themselves quickly for different jobs if the ones they have disappear, be the kinds of people that other people want to associate with and to pay for personal services, and handle a life that will have periodic disruptions both of routine and of income as jobs come and go. There is brief discussion of some predictions about likely future job roles, but the important point is that we cannot know with any accuracy either which jobs will evolve or how quickly different work sectors in a new economy will emerge. The core of the chapter is the case for each of eight competences that will best prepare students for life in the age of smart machines. These competences are the ability to learn efficiently and quickly; socioemotional skills that will allow people to engage in activity that machines cannot do as well; skills of civic participation that will be needed if society is to survive the disruptions of the emergence of machine intelligence; the ability to evaluate information in a world where claims circulate easily regardless of the support that might warrant their acceptance; facility in collaborative activity (including dealing with complexity, communication, collaboration, and creativity); the ability to manage one’s finances in a period where employment and income is not stable; confidence in one’s ability to succeed in novel tasks and to adapt to emerging situations; and the physical and mental fitness needed to thrive in a period of unpredictability.
